A Better Grace
by tessiete
Summary: There's a mirror that hangs in Diane's office. It's small, and square, and if Will stands in just the right spot, he can see himself.


_"Narcissus is the glory of his race,  
__For who does nothing with a better grace?"_

_\- Edward Young_

i. There's a mirror in Diane's office. It's square, and dark, and flush against the small strip of wall that divides one bank of windows from the next. It's made of clean lines, and sharp angles, and aside from the art, and the furniture, and the fresh cut flowers – which are all equally reflections of her – it's her one acquiescence to vanity. Small, but deliberately framed. She rarely looks at it, and the most it sees of her is the back of her head, hair coiffed, neck long, and straight as she regards the parade of clients in front of her. There's a mirror in Diane's office that she doesn't even notice, but it faces his own, and sometimes it frightens him to catch his gaze reflected there.

* * *

ii. _Eyes down_, he thinks. _Eyes on your own work_. It's a mantra he's not heard since college, when the accusation of plagiarism was a specter professors used to frighten the honest, and challenge the villains. He never knew anyone to be called up for it, but that old anxiety is back. He's done nothing wrong. But he's tempted.

Alicia's back.

Back in his life, back to the law, back in the world. It's a reawakening, and he really should have known better when he met her in the elevator. When, without thought, his hand reached out and stopped time. Just for a second. Just a second. And it was Georgetown just yesterday. He'd made her laugh, and when he breathed next, he could feel the rush of air snag on the vessels of his heart to learn he could still do that. She made him smile for no other reason than that he was glad.

She was back.

And Peter's locked in jail.

There's a part of him that's too big to acknowledge which curdles with delight when he thinks about it, because suddenly there's time. There is more time. He breathes deep and fast to sweep clear his thoughts, but it's not enough to expel her from them. She's rooted there. He knows he shouldn't, but he can't help it, because after all this time, still – _He wants_.

He shakes his head, drags grasping fingers down his face, and pushes his away from his desk. The space around him opens up, and he glances across the way to see his assistant tug at the chain on her desk lamp. She grabs her bag, her coat thrown over her arm. He watches her; the movement of her hips, the sway, the curves and lines, and it's almost an idea. When she smiles as she turns to leave, it's almost a good one.

But there's something flashing on the wall of the other room. Cold, lascivious eyes catch his own, and he recognises them without wanting to. His assistant is gone, her appeal with her, and he turns his eyes back to his work.

* * *

iii. Sound comes before sight, and he calls out as he exits the bathroom.

"Who's there?"

"Who's there," she answers back. It's late enough for her to tease him, but there's light enough coming from the several lamps, and the city skyline to illuminate the easy slope of her shoulders. Down, and back – comfortable. During the day, he watches as they creep higher and higher towards her ears. She smiks when she sees him now, the tension in her frame of an entirely different kind. "It's me," she says.

"It's you."

And her smile widens. _That was me_, he thinks._ I did that._

He approaches her, tailoring his gait to match her voice. There's a diffidence, and coquettishness in it, but she gets away with it because it's spoken in the dusk. Something more visceral hides there, and he feels it too, coiled in the bones of his pelvis.

She stands in front of him, toe to toe, and she looks him in the eye. This is as direct as they've ever been.

"Peter's got the kids, tonight," she says.

"Does he?" he replies. "Well, I've got plans."

He can't help it. He can't help but pick at her, crawl under her skin the way she does his, but he's grinning before her face has time to fall.

"Luckily, they're with you."

And she smiles at him, the same way she always has.

"I'll see you in a while."

Before she can leave, he reaches out and pinches a small fold of red wool at her wrist. One quick kiss, and then she's gone. It's still too new to be comfortably rote, and he likes that. He thinks he'll like them when they're rote, too, but there's no rush.

Diane's office is as empty as the rest of Lockhart/Gardner, but that little mirror is staring at him, and he finds himself staring back. His mouth bends upwards, and he watches it, enamoured. There's something captivating about this shadow in the dark. He's staring at a man in love, and he can't look away.

* * *

iv. He's been waiting for this. He knew this was coming. He's not a fool, and he could feel her pulling away as surely as though he held her in his arms. _Thank you,_ she said, but there was no reason she could think of for him to meet her kids. He should have known better._ He should have known._ But he thought they had a little more time.

Before she even speaks, before she's even stopped smiling, he can hear her. He's heard it before, but he needs her to say it again anyway because he's still waiting; waiting for something more than he was offered last time. Not an apology, or an excuse, but an explanation. Something to fight, to rail against, to beat down with logic, and persistence, and sheer force of will. She ends it without any of those things.

_It's too much._

That's all it is. If this were anyone else, or he were anyone else, he'd demand more. But it's not. It's Alicia Cavenaugh, and it's January of 1L, and he's always dealt with her gently. She wrings the kindness from him like a rag. He likes it. He likes them. Even when it's finished and he's empty, he likes it.

Over her shoulder, there's a silver light, and a brief glimpse of sky. Whatever angle makes that possible vanishes as he steps forward to see her out the door. Then, he fills the frame.

There's something appealing about your own suffering, he thinks, as he examines himself across the vast, empty rooms. Something that you can't help but be captured by, something fulfilling in not just feeling that much agony, but watching it carve lines into your own familiar face. He stands struck, infatuate with his own fragility.

* * *

v. When she leaves, he doesn't spend any time thinking about the reasons why. The reasons why don't matter, and he can't bear the thought that if he looks too hard, he'll hate the things he finds. He'd rather be mad and blind than understanding. He'd rather be cruel. Because he's always dealt with her gently, and she never cared at all.

It's easier like that.

So he stays late, and comes early, and more than once he doesn't go home at all. He feels like he's breaking apart, like spidering porcelain, the lines multiplying and reaching farther and farther until the surface is so riddled with them it collapses on itself. So he fights it. He refuses to be destroyed by someone whom it costs nothing to do.

He's quick in court, he's vicious in practice, and he doesn't ever stop to look. It's there, but he refuses to acknowledge it, ducking in and out of his office without giving in to the spark in the periphery of his vision, because he can't afford to see what's left.

Until he hasn't got a choice. Like a meteor, he's burning up, and there's only so much to be consumed before there's nothing but ash, and the polished fragments of bones she's done her best to pick clean. She's come to him in a suit made of his own skeleton: white, and bare, and cold, and it's too much.

He stays late again. At night, the mirror is empty. Black. He looks and looks, feet planted, and shoulders squared, determined to recognise something in the sooty ghost that flickers in the glass, filling in the place he used to be. He doesn't see anything. Maybe there's nothing to see, but he stands there for a long time, hoping.

* * *

vi. There's a mirror in Diane's office. It's small, and square, and hangs just in the centre of the thin strip of wall between windows.

"I hung it there," she tells Alicia, wonderingly. "That's mine. It's a wonder David didn't take it down the moment I left. But then, I suppose it was as flattering to his vanity as it is mine."

She approaches it, studying her reflection as though astonished by her own presence.

"I love this mirror," she says. "I almost forgot I had it. It's funny what we leave behind, and what we notice when we come back, isn't it?"

Alicia nods, and Diane joins her in the hall. There's one room that neither of them know how to come back to.

"No," she says, mercy in her tone. It's rare, and it makes Alicia smile. "Take mine."

There's a chair, and a desk, and they're not the same, but they're still familiar. The walls, and the windows, and the mirror. There is no fresh start. There can't be.

"I won't hear of it," she says.

She sits, and breathes him in, the little that's left in the place that he built, burned into her memory. There's something lasting here, not tied to furniture, or baseballs, or atoms. There's something here. She settles in the chair, her arms bent in angle with the steel frame, her back tall, and stiff. _This is right,_ she thinks. _This is where I'm supposed to be_. She turns her head to let her partner know, and when she looks across the way, she thinks that just for a second – _just a second_ – familiar eyes catch her own in the mirror in Diane's office.


End file.
